The lost and found Armenian with a power

Helene Pilibosian

Helene Pilibosian was born in Boston, MA, and lives in Watertown, MA. She attended Harvard University from which she received a degree in the humanities. After working as an editor at The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, she now heads Ohan Press, a private bilingual micropress, which has published eight books of both prose and poetry. Its web site is

Her poems have appeared in such magazines as The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, The Hollins Critic, North American Review, Seattle Review, Ellipsis and Weber: The Contemporary West and in many anthologies. She has published the books Carvings from an Heirloom: Oral History Poems, At Quarter Past Reality: New and Selected Poems and History’s Twists: The Armenians. Her early work has been cited in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature.

Some of her poems

1
Spirit climbs

where rhymes chime bold.

The bells of diction.

The rills of sound.

The goddess Anahit grew

in pagan beauty bounds.

With a gold bracelet

and an Armenian coin,

I dreamed reams of time

and climbed the Roman fence

like the adventurous vine

to the ancient Antioch yard.

A rooster crowed on an ancient day

near a mountain that sang praise

in the minor key.

It was the Asian symphony

with soldiers rollicking

in their nights of Bacchus.

The walls of empire were strong

but as legions went along they cracked.

Bits of mosaic that had tiled the floors

of the baths became artifacts.

Armenians grew the grapes

as that throne rose,

rams locking horns in habitual battle.

Armenians were lost,

but hung onto some Roman whims

like designs of rams and peacocks

in their embroidery,

like the rooster on the mountain

and the handsome profiles

of Roman men and women.

2
Armenians commanded

kings and property.

There were dynasties,

one after another, that entered

into the total mentality.

Give me a primer or a tale,

that of Tigran ruling for unity of states,

that of Queen Satenig with silk and gold thread.

Royalty in the clothes is also in the head.

It was then dead after the cymbal clash

lost its willing dash.

Impotent candles roamed the palaces.

Manuscripts found their thrones.

Puffs of incense rose.

Give me a primer showing

soldier Vartan freeing the cross

from the Persian deity.

Then there was Byzantine fealty.

Celebrations breed celebrations.

Celebrations seed us.

3

The Euphrates was near with ideas,

its belly having been swollen

with domination for so long it burst.

Centuries were the sanctuary

from which even the Church

took its inspiration in songs of the mass

that oozed a sweet sadness.

The Turkish sword or empire.

The Soviet Union hammer.

Yet landscapes were still

on perpetual loan for art.

Presidents adjusted the manners

of kings and czars.

The soothing hand of banners

was on their brows.

My heritage was born

out of the ice of these rivers

as God washed time with fine soap

and made it leather boots

for stepping in mud

and climbing through snow.

The tryst of the old

rhymes with people who were cold.

The beat of the new

rhymes with what to do.

The immortal grapevine

bears the leaves that wrap our lives,

the taste of tradition

preparing grapes for wine,

the fame of Armenian cognac

and of recovery in time.

From the book History's Twists: The Armenians by Helene Pilibosian

Serious Cartoons

We are all proofreaders

trying to correct the politics

that satirists like best

or trying to reverse the slide

of a sublime civilization.

The clock is saturated

with cartoons of the bus

driving us out of the storm

of human formations.

Our wishes slither along the stage

like anacondas searching for breakfast.

One door opens American,

the other closes French

as we practice our illusions

like children again playing with blocks.

Less often we search for that house

where our identity lived

and where our wishes whisper

once upon a moment that wasn’t.

We act silly as we climb trees

that pretend to be eternity.

We become saints when we spend

all emotions for food and healing.

We are grocers of our happiness,

magicians of our disappearances.

We are handypersons

of our liabilities and ideas.

We are now prisoners

of geometry and electronics.

The old illusions are simply

bubbles down the drain

and fade away as slyly

as they first appeared.

So lets hear global jokes,

funny as any we know,

to erase the frown’s creases.

Seashore Seeding

Sand in my mouth

was a dry day at the shore

where the swim had been

the wave of the hand

out of the cold

of the new Nantasket

without a roller coaster ride.

Former days hid there

like honey on yogurt,

slightly sweet like the photo

of the silken wheat field.

Like the impractical artist,

I couldn’t be taken by the vision

of the shore gradually being

drowned by rising waters.

I rejected the pessimism

of the puerile pen

for the joy of a wreath

understating its welcome.

Though there was no flavor

to savor in the smog

that sometimes deleted thought,

I painted my own ideas

with the wonder of ice cream,

the sensation of strawberries,

the pick of orchids,

the clean sweep of streets,

the shine of a new car,

the sense of the frugal,

the nostalgia of the rules,

the praise of winter ice,

the melting that is better.

All for a shore

that didn’t see me there.

The Saved Vase

A vase from 1800 speaks

with lips of testimony

in no court but the present moment.

Its chic takes a palatable poll

fired in a hired kiln

to play a tame chord

with magnificent sputter.

It saves its palatial luster.

Its design was always hence,

flowers with joints

like our fingers and toes.

A spray of blossoms

would compliment it neatly

in imitation or celebration

of its acceptance.

Its diction never slurs

or blurs its careful lines

into indefinites.

Attitude upon the table

is its final sum.

I’ll call the experts

if questions of value peak;

but who would tweak the truth?

Contrast the games that need

no glass or firing,

no time for their striving.

"What’s My Line"

and "Wheel of Fortune,"

the TV brainy lanes

or Pac-Man that made

computers so famous.

Contrast truth with truth

and you will see the vase

in all its radiance.